In a sentenceThe Profesor has planned for everything except the people he hired to carry it out
A man who calls himself the Profesor (Álvaro Morte) gathers a crew, gives them months of lessons and the names of cities, and sends them into the Mint. Tokio (Úrsula Corberó), Berlín (Pedro Alonso), Nairobi (Alba Flores), Denver (Jaime Lorente), Río (Miguel Herrán) and Moscú (Paco Tous) take the staff hostage and keep the presses running for as long as the police can be kept talking. Inspector Raquel Murillo (Itziar Ituño) runs the negotiation from a tent outside. Inside, the Mint’s director Arturo Román (Enrique Arce) and his secretary Mónica Gaztambide (Esther Acebo) have a secret between them that the plan did not allow for. Tokio narrates, from somewhere after the fact.
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Álex Pina’s Spanish heist serial is fast, loud and better plotted than its reputation for melodrama suggests, at least in its first run at the Mint. The later seasons repeat the trick at greater length and with more shouting, for the converted only.
La casa de papel, sold to the English-speaking world as Money Heist, is a heist film that runs for 41 episodes. Álex Pina’s idea is the oldest in the genre: a man with a plan, a crew who did not read it, a building nobody is supposed to leave. The first season, 15 episodes from 2 May 2017, spends all of them inside the Mint and in the police tent outside, and it is as good as popular television gets at this sort of thing. The two seasons that follow do it again, longer and louder, and we would send you to them only if the first has not been enough.
The pleasure is watching a plan meet people. The Profesor (Álvaro Morte) has thought of everything and written it down as rules, no names, no blood, no relationships, and the drama of the first season is each rule breaking within a day of the doors closing. Morte plays him as a man who can predict the Spanish state and cannot order a drink without adjusting his glasses. His scenes with Raquel Murillo (Itziar Ituño), the inspector running the negotiation, are the best written in the show: two tired, competent people flirting while both of them lie. Among a crew of comic-book criminals, she reads as a real police officer.
Fernando González’s Mint is a maze of green-tiled corridors and a printing hall where the presses never stop. Rosa Solano’s costume idea is the show’s best joke: everyone inside, hostage and thief, is dressed identically, so from the police cameras nobody can tell who to shoot. Migue Amoedo, David Azcano and Sergi Bartrolí light the interiors hard and red and the Profesor’s hideout in warm amber, so you always know which side of the wall you are on. Manel Santisteban and Iván M. Lacámara’s score is mostly ticking percussion under the dialogue, and by the third season it hardly ever stops.
Pedro Alonso’s Berlín, who commands the inside, is the best thing in the first run: courtly, cruel and funny, a man who treats a hostage crisis as a dinner party he is hosting. Alba Flores’s Nairobi runs the presses with a foreman’s pride and supplies most of the warmth. Paco Tous, as Moscú, is the one grown-up in the building. Jaime Lorente’s Denver has a laugh you will either love or learn to dread, and his scenes with Esther Acebo’s Mónica Gaztambide became the strand that surprised us most. Tokio (Úrsula Corberó) narrates, and is written as the chaos the plan cannot hold, which works; her voiceover, telling us what we have just watched and how to feel about it, is the show’s worst habit, and it never breaks it.
The later seasons are where our patience went. Season two, 16 episodes from 19 July 2019, and season three, ten from 3 September 2021, stage a second and larger job with new faces, and Najwa Nimri’s Alicia Sierra, a pregnant, chain-smoking inspector, is the best addition the show ever makes. Rodrigo de la Serna’s Palermo is the next. But the structure has hardened into a machine: a crisis, a flashback in which the Profesor explains he had a plan for exactly this, another crisis. Eight credited directors, Jesús Colmenar among them, and eight credited editors keep it moving, but by the third season every line is shouted and every scene is cut as if it were the last. We were exhausted, and then annoyed at being exhausted, because we could remember how tightly the first 15 episodes had held.
The show likes to think of itself as a protest, and in the first season, when the Profesor makes his case for the job, the politics have a point. After that they are a costume. Watch the first season in Spanish with subtitles, over a few evenings rather than one, and stop there if you can. If you cannot, you will get the same robbery again and you will know exactly where the flashbacks go. The 15 certificate is fair: a good deal of blood, a great deal of swearing, and sex that is mostly interrupted by gunfire.
The review praises the pulse-pounding tension and glossy style of the final season, calling it a blast from start to finish despite being best for hardcore fans.
Read the full review →The critic finds the series refreshing and addictive, breathing new life into the heist genre with its high stakes, socio-political themes, and realistic portrayal of the mental costs of the crimes. They single out the continental Spanish framework and anti-government crusade as particularly effective elements that keep the show relevant.
Read the full review →The series is a solid, cliché-filled Spanish crime drama that delivers entertaining heist thrills without aspiring to prestige status. It maintains dramatic tension through simple, satisfying plotting and strong ensemble performances.
Read the full review →
Inside Man · not reviewed yetSpike Lee’s bank siege, where the negotiator is always one step behind the plan.
Dog Day AfternoonA hostage crisis that goes wrong from the first minute and stays human throughout.
Rififi · not reviewed yetDassin’s Paris jewel job, half an hour of silent drilling and no music at all.
Lupin · not reviewed yetFrench gentleman thief, glossy Paris, and a lead who charms rather than shouts.
The Bank Job · not reviewed yetA London tunnel robbery from the seventies, played straight and cut tight.
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